For a discussion I’ve been having elsewhere on the internet, I translated Chrysostom’s discussion of John 3:14-16. Its powerful stuff and I thought I’d share it with you. The syntax here is pretty cool. Chrysostom is a great writer and what he’s done here is beautiful. I’ve treated quotations of scripture differently than other editions. I’ve treated them as intertextual. I think that Chrysostom has worked hard to maintain the flow of thought when he quote scripture and it seems evident here. And feel free to find and correct errors in my translation. This is a learning effort, as always.

For if by looking toward the bronze snake, the Jews escaped death, to a greater degree will those who place their trust in he who was crucified–suitably, they will enjoy a much greater benefit, too!For this happened neither because of the weakness of the Cross, nor because the Jews prevailed over Christ. Rather it is because God loved the world.

Because of this, His living temple was crucified, so that anyone who puts his trust in him might not perish, but instead have live eternal. Don’t you see here the background behind the cross and the salvation that comes from it? Do you see the connection of the Type to the Reality.

There, the Jews escaped death but only temporarily. Here, the one who trusts has an eternal escape. There, the hanging serpent heals only snake bites. Here, to the wounds inflicted by the spiritual serpent, the Crucified Jesus brought healing. There those who looked with their physical eyes were healed, But here the person who looks with eyes that understand has all his sin put away. There, what hung was bronze shaped into a serpent. Here, the Master’s body built by the Spirit.

The snake bit there and the snake healed. So also here, death destroyed and death saved. But the destroy snake had venom, while the saving one was free of venom. and here it is the same again. For the death that destroyed had sin, exactly like the serpent had venom. But the Lord was free of all sin, just as the bronze serpent was of venom.

Wow Mike (and not “bow wow” at all). You bring across the “powerful,” “cool” “syntax” beautifully. And just to illustrate, here’s Philip Schaff’s translation in comparison with yours on the bit Sue’s reformatted. You show the play in phrasal variations on the syntax theme:

You have θάνατος ἀπώλεσε “death destroyed” / θάνατος ἔσωσεν “death saved” (which Schaff unnecessarily disambiguates by his adding the indefinite article plus the capital letter “D” to mark the latter). And you have (with Sue’s parallelism added) ὁ μὲν ἀπολλὺς ὄφις “the snake that destroyed” / ὁ μὲν ἀπολλὺς θάνατος “the death that destroyed” (while Schaff commits what Robert Alter calls the translator’s “heresy of explanation,” again, with “the death which slew us”). And your “exactly like” then “just like” are just as beautiful (reminding me of that USA cigarette jingle so long ago: “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should”): the wordplay is so much more compelling in Chrysostom’s text than Schaff’s bald “as” for ὥσπερ. So here’s Schaff bit per Sue’s reformatting for comparisons (though I could go on with longer and more contrasts on the first part too – thanks for translating!) :

“there a serpent bit and a serpent healed,
here death destroyed and a Death saved.
But the snake which destroyed had venom,
that which saved was free from venom;
and so again was it here,
for the death which slew us had sin with it,
as the serpent had venom;
but the Lord’s Death was free from all sin,
as the brazen serpent from venom.”